David Baddiel – The Death of Eli Gold (страница 21)

Even without the Chinese pronunciation, Harvey has never been keen on the live-in-the-moment thing. He knows people think it is the key to happiness, but it seems to him that he, driven by his physical impulses, lives always in the moment. If he buys a sandwich at 10 a.m., intending to eat it for lunch, he will eat it as soon as he gets back to his house at 10.15. If he feels tired, wherever he is, he falls asleep. If he sits down at his computer intending to spend four hours writing ghost-biography, he will spend three hours and forty-five minutes of that allotted time watching internet pornography. That is what living in his particular moment is: and it has brought him to a depression so severe it feels as if large weights have been sewn onto the inside of his skin.

8. See below.

‘But obviously, I can’t get back in time for the session,’ says Harvey, frantically looking at his watch. The phone call to Dizzy Harris has gone on for over five minutes, and he knows, since he is still unable to remember the fucking pre-dialling number, that it is costing him a fortune in hotel charges. ‘I’m in New York. I can’t leave because my father might die any day. You’re my therapist. Have a fucking heart.’

There was a silence on the other end of the line, a silence that Harvey took to be judgemental. This made him feel furious in two ways: first, because he was being judged – in that particularly infuriating non-reactive therapist’s way – and secondly, because those five seconds of silence just cost him, he reckoned, ten dollars.

‘As you know, Harvey, I’m entirely sympathetic to your situation,’ said Dizzy in his measured burr: Dizzy speaks posh Scottish, an accent that modulates very easily into patronizing. Harvey hates that tone, especially now, when he feels that it is being measured out in small Dickensian piles of his coins. ‘But most of my clients, if not all of them, are in difficult situations emotionally. And they all have to work with me according to the same rules. Which I did explain to you at the beginning.’

Why, thinks Harvey, did I go with this twat? I should have known straight away from the name: what kind of therapist – no, what kind of twat – calls himself Dizzy? Not even as a nickname – Dizzy is his name, or at least he’s made it his name, it’s on his books, the ones forever lined up prominently on his shelves: Psychological Dysfunction and Mental Wellness, by Dizzy Harris. Overcoming Bad Belief by Dizzy Harris. Beyond Anxiety Disorder by Dizzy Yes That’s Right You Heard Me Dizzy Harris. Dizzy calling himself Dizzy is all part of what’s wrong with Dizzy, which is that he is a self-styled colourful character, the type of person who might wear a multi-coloured waistcoat, although in his case he announces his colourfulness by wearing, for the sessions, a velvet smoking jacket and bow tie. For the first session the bow tie was at least matching; but latterly he has greeted Harvey at the door of his west London consulting rooms wearing one that has been striped, and another polka-dotted.

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